Lecturer in Music

Academic History

B.M. Indiana University, Piano Performance, With High Distinction

Performer's Certificate, Indiana University

M.M. Indiana University, Piano Performance, With High Distinction

Personal Interests

I am a professional performing pianist specializing in modern music and chamber music of all eras, and have played concerts to great critical acclaim in such venues as the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., the Schoenberg Institute in Vienna, Austria, Cooper Union in New York City, and both Zipper Auditorium and REDCAT in Los Angeles. A CD I recently recorded of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire and Cabaret Songs has received fabulous reviews in Gramophone Magazine, the American Record Guide, and Opera News.

Awards and Honors

Mary Wig Johnson Faculty Achievement Award, Scripps College, 2009

Special Commendation Award from ASCAP and CMA for a 12-CD boxed set of modern music recorded with Southwest Chamber Music

Performer's Certificate awarded by Indiana University School of Music, one of only 3 awarded that year to a student body of over 1500 music majors.

Member of Pi Kappa Lambda during college years – an honorary society for those displaying outstanding scholarly achievement in music

Biography

Gayle Blankenburg has performed extensively to great critical acclaim as a solo pianist, chamber musician, and vocal accompanist. She was a roster artist with Southwest Chamber Music from 1996-2003 and is currently a member of the Los Angeles-based ensembles "inauthentica," "the feHmEnbuRg trio," "the mEnbuRg duo," and "pierrotplus+." She has recorded over a dozen commercially-available CDs, including song cycles with famed sopranos Phyllis Bryn-Julson and Lucy Shelton, and a solo piano recording of Carlos Chavez's Invention I on a Grammy-winning Southwest Chamber Music CD.

The Los Angeles Times has said of her playing, "Blankenburg played with elegant power and poise... Her crisp touch and light pedaling produced crystalline, pensive, haunting sequences... This is a gratefully idiomatic piece for a pianist with both power and a palette, requirements Blankenburg met easily."

Ms. Blankenburg was a student of the distinguished pianists Menahem Pressler (of the Beaux Arts Trio) and Abbey Simon.